Acoustic Anthems

They're stripped down and raw, they allow you to connect directly to the soul of an artist, and they sound great when played round a campfire . . . there's something undeniably special about rock's acoustic anthems, something primal perhaps, a spirit that quickens the pulse and courses through all these Essentials, every one connected by guitar strings. Bob Dylan gets us underway with "Blowin' In the Wind", with support from a host of legends, from the Stones (with their tenderest love song, "Wild Horses") to James Taylor (his landmark track "Fire and Rain"). Two-score years separate a couple of the best lust anthems you'll find among our Next Steps.

Decades come and go, but an acoustic classic is timeless — trace a line here from Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" (1967), one of the great songs about sexual attraction ever penned, to "Hey There Delilah" by the Plain White T's, which became a huge hit exactly 40 years after Cohen's erotic masterpiece, and treads similar ground: "oh, what you do to me!" Or from Don McLean's national elegy from 1971, "American Pie", to Johnny Cash's heartbreaking, sepulchral cover of Trent Reznor's "Hurt" (2003), which stands as the Man in Black's epitaph. The Jam gets angry, and the Pogues look through a glass darkly, in Deep Cuts.

Acoustic anthems, like the sound of a gently strummed guitar, tend to be wistful — but that's not always the case. Stealers Wheel procured a jaunty vibe on their 1972 track "Stuck in the Middle With You" — a mood later subverted by Quentin Tarantino when he added it to the "ear" scene in Reservoir Dogs — and the Jam invested "That's Entertainment", their 1981 hymn to urban boredom and blight, with an anger that burns like acid. The Pogues, meanwhile, do nostalgia like only they can (i.e. the past viewed through the bottom of a glass) on "A Rainy Night In Soho".

A singer and a guitar — in the world of rock it's the simplest combination, and perhaps the most effective. It's where most great songs begin, and judging by these anthemic acoustic Essentials, where many of them end. Sure you can add an embellishment here and there — a harmonica or a wash of synth perhaps — but the basic formula remains the same. Bob Marley never sounds more direct than when he strips "Redemption Songs" to its skeleton; the sweetness of Richard Ashcroft's despair is never more affecting than on the demo cut for "The Drugs Don't Work"; and Eric Clapton never bares more of his heart than when performing "Tears in Heaven" unplugged. Oh, yes, this collection represents what exists at the very core of rock 'n' roll.